Considering cancelling your WoW accounts (connectivity)

[fyedaddy]

Is anyone else close to suspending/cancelling their accounts due to the poor playing conditions over the past month? I love this game, and want to play it on a daily basis, but it's obvious they've oversold their infrastructure yet again.

[-Lord Ebonstone-]

What server(s) are you on?  In my experience, the ironic truth is that backwater servers are often much crappier in terms of performance than the big ones.  I guess they throw all the shiny hardware at the big guys, and forget the little ones.

[fyedaddy]

I hit the same problems on Feathermoon (my main) and Dark Iron (which I've taken up the Horde side in the PvP vs. PA battle). I've also run into this on Boulderfist where I have one experimental alt.

I can handle the occasional loot lag (the occasional couple of seconds) but these past three weeks have been terrible. This weekend was the worst so far this month. Game play conditions deteriorated throughout the evening and both nights ended in a disconn (couldn't log back in after that).

What server(s) are you on? Does this happen to you?

[unbreakable]

How long can you suspend your account for?  I havent played in about 2-3 months.  Will probably go back once the weather turns cold.

[fyedaddy]

I don't know, I had hoped not to get to that point. Does anyone know how long your characters are active if you cancel your sub and want to return?

[Destructor]

I don't know, I had hoped not to get to that point. Does anyone know how long your characters are active if you cancel your sub and want to return?

All MMOs in history (short of possibly FFXI - I know there used to be a warning somewhere when you quit that game) will pretty much keep your characters saved indefinitely. Yes, they do state they might delete your characters (and FFXI said that they will after 3 months), but to my knowledge, that has never happened on a MMO to date.

So take as much time off as you want. Your characters will be there for you when you return.

[Semaj]

I play on Dark Iron and for the most part the lag isnt vicious until you hit Orgrimmar.

Heck I was in a nice 40 on 40 brawl the other day and onyl really hit lag when I first ran into the fray.  From that point on it was golden.

[Farscryold]

I've been offline most of the time lately, but anytime I've been on other than early morning has seen ridiculous loot (and thus bank, mail, AH, and general item) lag.  Even hitting "exit" from the main menu resulted in about 2-3 minutes of delay, though chat text continued to flow normally the whole time.

If this continues, I may have to temporarily cancel my subscription while Blizzard continues to address the infrastructure issues.

The game is beyond fantastic; easily my favorite MMO (and I've tried most of them) and a game I intend to stick with for a long, long time to come ( and I started playing in the open beta last November).  My only complaint has been the infrastructure issues resulting in connection problems, login queues, and database access lag (primarily relating to "loot lag").

The other problems, like the initial hits when going into IF, or major raids, or whatever, I realize are just HD thrashing as the game suddenly goes into texture loading mode.  That's just a system limitation for me, as I made the choice to use all the special effects and highest textures; if I wanted to, I could disable those to avoid the heaviest thrashing, so I can't complain about that.

[Destructor]

If this continues, I may have to temporarily cancel my subscription while Blizzard continues to address the infrastructure issues.

Then you might as well quit. Blizzard has had serious infrastructure issues since they launched. And it's only gotten worse as time has gone on.

I mean, they only have 4 million subscribers. That's about $60 MILLION a month. And they don't have decent servers.

*shrugs*

[Koz]

If this continues, I may have to temporarily cancel my subscription while Blizzard continues to address the infrastructure issues.

Then you might as well quit. Blizzard has had serious infrastructure issues since they launched. And it's only gotten worse as time has gone on.

I mean, they only have 4 million subscribers. That's about $60 MILLION a month. And they don't have decent servers.

*shrugs*

The two servers I play on have been perfectly fine since I rejoined 1.5 months ago. I had one "waiting to authenticate" issue for about an hour one day, but that's it.

[Farscryold]

If this continues, I may have to temporarily cancel my subscription while Blizzard continues to address the infrastructure issues.

Then you might as well quit. Blizzard has had serious infrastructure issues since they launched. And it's only gotten worse as time has gone on.

I mean, they only have 4 million subscribers. That's about $60 MILLION a month. And they don't have decent servers.

*shrugs*

Well, for most of the spring and early summer I had little to no network problems with the game, so I think you're a bit off there.  There was a lot of trouble after launch, then loot lag was a problem through winter, but that was mostly resolved by late winter.  I knew there would be problems; what mmo hasn't had them?  So I rode it out.

The last several months have been mostly problem-free for me, until the last couple of weeks as things have rapidly degraded.

My guess is that they've been growing much more rapidly than anticipated, and we've just hit another bottleneck.  Once that's resolved, it'll be fine until another bottleneck is hit.

I'm confident they'll get past it, the only question is how long it'll take them.  

[Gedd]

And it's only gotten worse as time has gone on.

Not even close to being true.  By and large the servers are a ton better than they were during the stress test, launch, and the first few months. There are some servers which still have issues, but the majority of the servers are a whole lot more stable (remember the days when the Eastern Kingdom server would crash several times a night?) and most of the servers have no queues.

There are certainly still issues with lag, but it's nowhere near what I used to experience the first month or two.

As LE said, it does seem that the newer, lower pop servers tend to be running on the worst hardware.  The upgrades that Bliz has done since launch to the higher pop, more troublesome servers have gone a long way towards making the network/server issues much less frequent.

[Destructor]

I reside on Terenas (however you spell it), and I've seen my server performance degrade as the months have gone on. Occasional loot lag, AH delays, and outright pauses in the world. It wasn't like that earlier in the year. And it's only on the high end of a 'low' population server (according to the population list).

And then I dropped to a lower population server for fun. It was much, much worse, even though the population list said it had fewer people on it.

So, I stick by with what I've said.

[Semaj]

You runnign any interfaces/etc?

You think maybe its your side?  because I can safely say I have had lag/loot issues twice since I came back..   I had an interface problem for about 10 mins this morning and it was golden all day.

there is a chance if you have a bunch of crap running cleanup is vicious and causing the lag.

if not, I'd consider re-installing...

[GGMark]

playing on Whisperwind I have had almost NO server issues.  Usually my ping is in the 70MS area.  I have never had a instance crash on me.  The GF and her guild just ran onyxia last night, in 30 minutes.

[fyedaddy]

I've logged in a couple of times since starting this thread and, while it's gotten better this week (school starting?), I'm still running into loot/mailbox (database) lag.

I'd certainly lean towards it being something on my side if it weren't for so many others with the same issue. Otherwise my connection has been great across the board. Based on the suggestions here though it might not hurt to consider a reinstall. I'm not looking for an excuse to cancel my account, I just want to play again!  

[Destructor]

I've logged in a couple of times since starting this thread and, while it's gotten better this week (school starting?), I'm still running into loot/mailbox (database) lag.

I'd certainly lean towards it being something on my side if it weren't for so many others with the same issue. Otherwise my connection has been great across the board. Based on the suggestions here though it might not hurt to consider a reinstall. I'm not looking for an excuse to cancel my account, I just want to play again!  

And when I hear people complain about the same thing on my server (yes, people still yell LAG!! like they think it'll help them out ), I know it's not me nor my mods.

And the game is a very recent (month, tops) reinstall on a newly formatted drive, so it's not that either.

Some days the server works great and you never realize that Blizzard's server support is an absolute joke. And then you hit the weekends, and everything goes downhill.

[Rhinohelix]

I am on Greymare and while the queues has disappeared since the new servers opened, I have only noticed, just noticed, lag twice since the server opened.

I just recently converted from EQ2 and man am I having a good time.  If only I could get my RL friends to abandon their level 50 chars and come over with me.

Rhino

[Ranulf]

Stormrage has been really bad in the past month or so. Sargeras where my pvp horde alts are isn't much better but I hardly play on that server.

Tonights issues are apparently all or at least many servers..

http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.aspx?fn=wow-tech-support&t=461280&s=new&tmp=1#new

[GGMark]

Some of the servers have serioues issues.  Friend at work who plays on another server has had problems all the time with crashes.  His guild raided Onyxia, and her lair crashed.  When they came back, there were TWO of her in it.

Pernolde is where my gf has a alt, and its horrid there.  Lag wise.  You will always find lag in places like Ironforge and Orggrimar.  beacuse of the amount of people.  Even with a 3G Processor, 1G of ram, and a Geforce 6800 GT I still get some horrendous lag in IF.

[fyedaddy]

I haven't experienced any disconns from Feathermoon this week, but the loot lag has been lingering. Not as bad as it is on the weekends but enough to notice (and make looting mobs difficult in equal-to-higher conn'd zones). I'm curious to see what the weekend will bring.

[GGMark]

I havent had any problems in Whisperwind with disconnects.  No lag really.  No loot lag.  Though sometimes if I try and loot something to fast, like AS its dropping dead, it tells me the item is busy, but then i can just turn around and loot it.  No lag in intstances.

AND even for awhile, we could post in the forums using out WW ID's which was taken from us long ago..

[Koz]

I havent had any problems in Whisperwind with disconnects.  No lag really.  No loot lag.  Though sometimes if I try and loot something to fast, like AS its dropping dead, it tells me the item is busy, but then i can just turn around and loot it.  No lag in intstances.

AND even for awhile, we could post in the forums using out WW ID's which was taken from us long ago..

Oh man, IF is horrendous at peak hours on Whisperwind. Maybe it's just my dated machine, but every time I walk out into the common area there I just get up from my computer and let it load for a few minutes.

[Farscryold]

I havent had any problems in Whisperwind with disconnects.  No lag really.  No loot lag.  Though sometimes if I try and loot something to fast, like AS its dropping dead, it tells me the item is busy, but then i can just turn around and loot it.  No lag in intstances.

AND even for awhile, we could post in the forums using out WW ID's which was taken from us long ago..

Oh man, IF is horrendous at peak hours on Whisperwind. Maybe it's just my dated machine, but every time I walk out into the common area there I just get up from my computer and let it load for a few minutes.

I used to have that problem too, Koz.  I was running on 512 ram, upped it to a gig and it's much better.  That hit is your HD thrashing as it loads all the textures of people who insist on congregating and chatting in what is already the game's busiest area just from a traffic standpoint (bank & AH are there, plus all griffons flying into and out of IF pass directly over that spot).

[Harkonis]

SWG deleted many accounts on at least 2 occasions due to inactivity.  One was right before release of an expansion.

[Destructor]

SWG deleted many accounts on at least 2 occasions due to inactivity.  One was right before release of an expansion.

Uh...holy crap. Talk about how to piss off your customer base.